Over the years, various devices have been developed for attachments to toilets to reduce splash-back from feces or urine when a person is using the toilet. The impact of feces or urine upon the surface of water residing in a toilet creates a splash which can lead to noise and spraying of water onto surrounding surfaces, including the person using the toilet. Examples of such a toilet anti-splash devices can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,031,253 by Brendlinger titled "Method Of Making A Sanitary Toilet Anti-Splash And Silencer Device And Article Produced Thereby," U.S. Pat. No. 4,866,793 by Luedtke et al. titled "Toilet Anti-Splash Device," U.S. Pat. No. 3,212,104 by Stevens titled "Anti-Noise And Splash Screen For A Toilet," and U.S. Pat. No. 2,931,047 by Stebbins titled "Anti-Noise And Anti-Splash Attachment For A Toilet Bowl." These devices, however, focus only on aspects related to toilet bowls, provide screens or screening devices at strategic locations on the toilet bowl such as mounted to the hinge of the bowl cover or floating on the water in the bowl itself.
These prior known devices also fail to address the differences between a urinal and a toilet bowl. For example, a user of a urinal is often closer to the urinal inner back wall than the water within the urinal. The user of a toilet bowl, however, can be close to the water within the toilet bowl if sitting but not very close to water if standing. Accordingly, the splash-back from a urinal is usually from the inner back wall surface or other urinal filter surface positioned in the urinal. This splash-back can cause the spraying of urine to return to the user's legs, pants, and/or undergarments, as well as other surrounding regions. Because of the closeness of the urine projection, the splash-back problems may increased and the noise heard by others may slightly decrease.
Although filtering screens, such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,813,631 by Odman titled "Strainer Devices And Detachable Shaker Handles Therefor" and German Published Patent Document (DE 26 34 550 A) titled "Protection Screen Filter For Urinals--Has Flat Screen Base Fitted Into Basin And Is Readily Removed," have been known for years, these filtering screens do little to reduce the splash-back and noise problems with urinal usage. Because these filters are formed of metal or plastic and have only a simple mesh structure, when positioned in a urinal such screens can often increase the splash-back problem.